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Adventures During Covid WRITER & PHOTOGRAPHER Wendi Hartup Wendi Hartup
We've started taking more trips lately. Mostly to get my son away from screen time. He's 12 now so I've noticed it is getting a little harder to get him excited about our adventures. I'm not opposed to a few bribes just to get him in the car! Armed with our masks and spray sanitizer, we head out to locations within two hours drive or so. We drove to Kansas back in late July to see my folks. On the way I used this website I found that provides great ideas for short trips of unique things to see. It's called AtlasObscura and you can use it almost anywhere in the world. I'll warn you if your kid is like mine, he is not into history (math is his jam). In his words, there are a lot of spots about dead people (graves, statues, plaques, ...etc.). So I've had to search a little more these days to plan trips that add a little history but feel less like school; even if that means we rush through an interesting center with explanations. The good thing is after I find something I want to see and he might enjoy, I do some additional searching of things to do nearby to combine trips. About 1.5 hours south of Winston-Salem is Town Creek Indian Mound, Mount. Gilead, NC. This is the first and only National Historic Landmark in North Carolina that celebrates Native American culture. It was a very important gathering place for ceremonies, feasts and discussions for the Pee Dee people. We saw structures where people used to gather, a burial hut and the mound. Some archaeological digs showed that structures were built several times in the same location. There is a small restored prairie area surrounding the path leading to the mound. The visitor center, when open to the public, has fantastic Pee Dee history and they have quite a bit of artifacts as well as pottery discovered from the more than 50 years this site was studied. Other than exploring the structures and using your imagination to see life for the Pee Dee people, there is a lovely creek nearby and your kids can just run around with all the open space. We raced up the mound for fun to get to the shelter. About an hour south of Winston-Salem we visited Zootastic Park in Troutman, NC. This drive through zoo was quite the experience. We got two large cups of food and drove slowly down the path. Expect to take about an hour to drive through the zoo. We saw all kinds of animals on the drive: bison, zebras, deer, alpacas, eland antelope, watusi cows and more. Donkeys, llamas and ostriches come right up to the car windows and even follow your car (well, they did the day we went as we were the only car for about 20 minutes or so). One ostrich stuck its head right through Zach's window. I was feeding a donkey or llama on my side of the car. Zach calmly said in a low voice, "Uh Mommy?" I looked over and he's got a freaked out look as the ostrich is chowing down. I urged him to throw a few out the window on the ground and eased the car forward. We learned if we lingered a little too long, the ostriches shoved all the animals out of the way to get more
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At Morrow Mountain State Park.
Uwharrie River enters the Yadkin River
